


Orbital Dynamics

by neuxue



Series: Paradise Entropic [2]
Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Ilyena is an astronomer because why not, canon character death, madness and death and all the cheerful things that go along with the end of an Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 17:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9451436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuxue/pseuds/neuxue
Summary: Ilyena struggles to balance light and shadow amidst the chaotic gravity of a falling Age





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tedronai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tedronai/gifts).



> a much-belated gift. I've attempted canon compliance to the best of my ability (though I will acknowledge that it does perhaps diverge from the _intent_ of canon).

_"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;  
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."_

***

 “Sunhair” they call her, the young Aes Sedai who turns her studies skyward. From the sun and its small system she quickly moves on to other stars, to other galaxies, to all the brightness of the universe, and then to the darkness between. There are some who seek to travel to distant worlds, but Ilyena seeks nothing more and nothing less than understanding. By all she has been taught, by all the knowledge that has come before, by all the numbers, the galaxies she sees spinning their way through the cosmos should be tearing themselves apart, scattering cold stardust into a lightless void. Instead they dance, and she pursues the choreography.

She is inspired by visions she once thought useless; little more than flashes of colour and aura, they are too weak to merit the name Foretelling, too vague and erratic to merit much of her attention until now. Until time and again they show her pinpricks of flickering light embraced by swirling darkness. Shimmering just on the edge of sight, vanishing faster than a dream, they could almost be imagination. She has sometimes half-wondered if that is all her visions have ever been: nothing more than impressions and imaginings, wishes and fears. But she has never asked; she has little interest in studying the future, or in researchers puzzling over her every eyeblink, looking for meaning in hues of uncertainty. So she speaks of her visions to no one, but from her study of the orbits and motions of the stars, she turns her attention to the vastness around them, to the emptiness in her calculations that may not be empty at all.

The stars captivate her but it is darkness, matter's unknown and untouchable shadow, that binds the universe together and makes bright, clear poetry of her once-tangled equations.

It is the discovery of this strange dark matter that earns Ilyena Moerelle Dalisar her third name. She is among the first of her generation to be granted such an honour, and the Ansaline Gardens are filled with friends and colleagues and mentors and admirers who greet her with smiles of pride or awe or welcoming. Lews embraces her, Barid claims her first dance, Elan nods acknowledgment. In Mierin’s eyes she sees a flicker of envy, but Mierin joins her voice to the rest in congratulations, and laughs with them as they remember the past and look ahead to the bright future they are even now bringing, as they have always promised and been promised.

They all spin away and around in fragmented conversations melding together across a seamless dance, and as the tempo of the music increases and others fill the garden it seems as if they should fall away to far corners, yet they always seem to come back to the centre, drawn together by some uncharted gravity.

It has always been so between them. Elan, Barid, Lews; all court her, and each other, in their own ways, to their own ends. Mierin too, but Mierin is erratic, a stray moon caught in their orbit, impossible to trace or predict. She has never been part of the neat spiral the four of them have formed, the elegant dance that circles yet never truly touches. They are the golden ones, and have always been. Perhaps that is why Mierin turns so defiantly to silver.

But today, they are all aglow with warm evening sunlight.

***

They heap praises on Ilyena, lauding her discovery and her ingenuity, all the while failing to see what Mierin sees. Failing to see the _potential_ in such a vast untapped reservoir. Ilyena, sunhaired and sunblinded Ilyena, has not even considered that the darkness she has found is more than a simple counterweight or anchor for the bright orbits she so loves.

Ilyena studies the spaces between stars, but Mierin has studied the space between _worlds_ , and if the darkness there follows similar principles as Ilyena’s dark matter…

Mierin begins gathering a research team, puts together a proposal. She will harness the true power in Ilyena’s so-called discovery, and show them what it means to innovate.

***

They dance their way through luminous years of triumphs and accolades, of names bestowed and positions gained, of discoveries and joys and celebrations.

Gentle moonlight stains the clouds and _chora_ leaves silver when they meet on the eve of Mierin’s attempt to change the world forever. Ilyena understands little of the science, for all that Mierin claims it is similar to her own work. Her calculations do hint at a dark energy to match the matter, but she is less interested in the notion of harnessing the darkness she has found than in understanding how it holds the heavens together and sets brightness spinning in orbit. Still, she is as eager as the rest to see what change an undivided power could bring, should Mierin succeed.

Yet twinned with the thrill of discovery is a faint thrill of foreboding, though she could not begin to explain why, except that it comes with a blur of red and black shot through with silver. The vision vanishes like fog in the next breath of wind, and the silent lingering darkness leaves her no answers. At least, none she can interpret. The skies offer her every answer, written in the indecipherable language of starlight and vastness, but every successful translation only sets more questions flying out in fractal from a centre she has barely begun to understand.

Perhaps that is why Mierin’s plans both inspire and frighten her. Ilyena has stepped softly around the edges of darkness, measuring its shape with starlight and gravity, while Mierin plans to simply pierce its heart and let it bleed its secrets. Perhaps she is afraid of what those secrets may be. Perhaps she is afraid of the questions that will follow. Perhaps it is simply her turn to be envious.

She tries to push those thoughts away, for they have no place in this dance. Tries to ignore the aura of bright darkness that briefly obscures Mierin’s face. But when Barid pulls her aside to tell her that one of Elan’s dreams might be interesting to her, the coincidence feels too heavy. So she approaches Elan with all the lightness she can command.

“Barid says you dreamed of me,” she says teasingly, winking and tossing her hair. “Good dreams, I hope?”

She is not expecting laughter, not from him, but when he does not even smirk or roll his eyes, worry overtakes playfulness. "What is it, Elan?"

She can see almost the exact moment he decides not to tell her. For an instant she thinks he might, as he draws in a slow breath and an expression almost like sorrow crosses his face, but just as quickly it is gone, his features smoothed into calm. And then he stands with a blithe smile that she would never have suspected was forced, had she not seen his expression only seconds before, and holds out a hand in mock formality.

“Would you honour me with a dance?” he says, matching her earlier flirtatious tone, “I dreamed that you would dance with me.”

He is a skilled dancer, and she can sense his distraction only through familiarity as they speak even more lightly than they twirl across the gardens. There has always been a dark mercuriality to Elan, so his reticence is almost less surprising than the fact that he very nearly told her… _something_. She cannot shake the feeling that it is something important, something dark and heavy enough to serve as the counterweight to the light gaiety of the evening.

She finds Barid for the next dance, but he only shakes his head tersely before changing the subject when she asks what he meant about Elan’s dream. But as she spins away from him to take Lews’s hand next, she turns back just for a moment, long enough to see Barid staring at Lews with eyes full of anger cold enough to burn.

Tension between Barid and Lews is nothing new; she cannot remember a time when it was not an integral part of their friendship. So once more she tries to tell herself she is seeing everything in nothing, that she is so used to searching in liminalities and threads of coincidence that she has begun to see them where they have no place. She dances with Lews and then with Mierin, following the familiar steps of their pattern, tracing out the familiar path of their orbit, and trying to push away the sense of foreboding that fills her with every step and smile.

***

 “You should not have told her,” Elan says coldly.

“Then you should not have told me,” Barid replies, his own voice icy with impatience; he is in no mood to play Elan’s games. Not now.

“I told you because I couldn’t tell Lews and—” his anger seems to break, and his voice turns rueful “—and I thought someone should know.” Barid is almost sure that is not what he had been about to say, but Elan has never been one to admit to need.

“Surely even you have seen how they look at each other,” Barid presses, earning nothing more than a disdainfully raised eyebrow in response. “She has to know. If it is only going to end in sorrow, she _has to know_.”

“Not sorrow.”

“What is that, if not sorrow?”

“Disaster,” Elan whispers. The word he uses is old, only just brushing the edges of familiarity and suggesting a magnitude Barid cannot comprehend. He involuntarily steps back from the expression in Elan’s eyes. What could Elan Morin Tedronai have seen, to cause him that kind of pain?

“You have to tell her,” he says finally, knowing how transparent he must appear. But in this moment he cannot bring himself to care.

“And ruin her happiness?” Elan’s tone is carefree, dismissive; the conversation is over.

“You were willing enough to ruin _mine_.”

Elan laughs, brushes a light hand across Barid’s shoulder. “Then it is good you are not the Dreamer.” Walking away, he turns back to add, “And Barid? If, as you say, even I have seen how they look at each other, you may want to find yourself another sun.”

Barid bites back a retort that he knows will do him no good, for he knows Elan is right. Instead he watches as Ilyena dances from partner to partner without ever leaving the centre of the floor, and wonders what disaster could possibly befall one who burns so brightly. Those who called her Sunhair named her well, but he has heard stories from Eval that were old before this Age was born, of those who flew too close to the sun. And Lews Therin has always sought the heights – what better way to cast so great a shadow?

***

Power floods through Mierin in near-unbearable torrents, but it pales in comparison to the promise of power just beyond the thin fabric of the Pattern, tantalising, tempting, a breath and a world away. She focuses all their combined strength on the smallest of weaves, and feels as it pierces through—

A moment—

A movement—

Darkness.

She is falling amidst an inferno of midnight, amidst flames that lick across her skin with tongues of power. _This_ is the power she has sought, embracing her and awaiting her embrace. No, _demanding_ her embrace, and as she reaches out she knows in an instant of jet-black clarity that if she surrenders to this power she will surrender herself. She tries to pull back but she is falling, wants to scream but she is falling, wants to release it wants it to release her wants to claim it all pull it into the core of herself and dance to its dissonant chaos. But she is falling.

No. She _will not fall_.

Instinct reaches and she follows with every aspect of herself, reaching with her whole being for this power she has so long sought. And then it is there, flooding her with something utterly unlike _saidar_ , filling her with power and glory and an echo of triumphant laughter.

It breaks her fall and nearly breaks her soul, tearing at her mind with its flames of darkness and its whispers that sounds like her name but not like her name at all.

***

Ilyena is preparing the intricate web of _saidar_ to lay on her telescope – a beautiful instrument made of glass and the One Power – when a strange cracking sound reaches her ears and a darkness entirely unlike the one she has come to know streaks across her vision in a blur. Almost without thought she drops the thin flows of Air and Spirit and Fire and spins a gateway, stepping through as the Sharom turns to a blaze of darkness around her.

There is an evacuation site beneath the Sharom, just outside the Collam Daan, in case of experiments gone awry or unforeseen emergencies. But as she emerges through her hastily-spun gateway, dodging a sharp fragment of what looks like white shell that flies in after her on a tendril of black fire, she realises she has unthinkingly opened a gateway into her smaller observatory at Tzora.

Halfway through spinning a second gateway to return to the Collam Daan, she catches sight of her smaller telescope here, and stops. It is made to see into distant galaxies, but with the right recalibrations…

It takes her several minutes of layering and interweaving fine flows of _saidar_ , split across almost two dozen distinct webs. She is not remarkably strong in the One Power, but her finesse is all but unmatched after years of refining precision across vast distances where a single breath here could throw her off by the width of an entire galaxy. At first she sees nothing but sky, but as she shifts the web slightly to adjust for the curvature of the earth, she is rewarded by a clear view of catastrophe.

So shocked is she by the all too real vision of sky filled with a roiling ocean of dark flame that it takes her a moment to register what else she is seeing: the Sharom is gone. She turns from the telescope, looking at the shattered white fragment that followed her through her gateway, filled with cold realisation.

The sky begins to darken even here, and she peers through the telescope once more at the flood of shadow cast by nothing she knows. This is entirely unlike the soft-solid darkness that embraces the stars, gently holding them in their orbits; its edges are smooth and yet simultaneously sharp, reaching out as if to raze the sky and rend the sunlight to pieces.

Still, something about it tugs at her mind, sparking a sense of almost-recognition. This is not her darkness; it is too similar and too opposite, and far too close, and yet.

A swirl of red and gold light flits across her sight and she understands. She had thought her visions were showing her the answers she sought, the heavy anchoring gravity that balanced and tethered the stars. But now doubt fills her, a shadow across her former certainty to match the shadow spreading across the sun. Was she so eager to discover that she ignored a warning, dismissing her Talent unless it aligned with her own interests? Could it have been showing her a different darkness entirely, a wholly different dynamic? Not a tandem push-pull of darkness and light, not a celestial embrace in the dance of orbits, but another darkness altogether, seeking to consume not the starlight but the very Light itself…she shivers as she realises what she has just thought, but there is no dance to distract her now.

Instead she begins to observe, begins trying to measure, trying to feel her way back into some semblance of certainty, or at least  of direction. Trying to understand, though she does not even know which questions to ask. But she must find them, for who else is there? She at least has studied another darkness, has come to understand it and work in tandem with it. Mierin has said there are similarities…looking at the black fire pouring from the wound in the sky Ilyena cannot make herself believe it, but her faith in her own instincts has been shaken, and she cannot bring herself to disbelieve anything until she can find something _to_ believe. Perhaps it is the same. Perhaps it only looks different from a distance. Perhaps its gravity simply feels harsher to those stars that throw themselves too eagerly into its path.

***

Amidst shock and horror at the catastrophe that meets his eyes as he steps out of a gateway, Barid cannot help a twinge of irritation upon seeing that Lews Therin is already there, calling out orders to the Aes Sedai behind him and channelling almost too fast to follow, barely sparing Barid a glimpse before turning to throw another web of Earth at the crumbling walls of the Collam Daan.

Of course, it is only to be expected: Lews leads the current administrative ajah of V’saine. This is likely not what he anticipated when he accepted the position, but it is no more than his duty. He undoubtedly received the emergency alert almost instantly, while Barid’s own team were called in moments later when the scope of the disaster became clear. The disaster.

The Sharom lies in shattered pieces on the black-scorched ground, and the Collam Daan is burning, and he has to force himself to look up at the sky where something like smoke or flame or nightmare billows across the daylight. Has to force himself not to spin a ward against sound as screams and the cruel whispers of that eerie fire reach his ears.

He gives quick instructions to his team, and sets off towards Lews, towards the evacuation zone that is still obscured by dust and flame. He is halfway there when he sees a figure emerge stumbling from the smoke, a limp form slung over his back, and realises Lews Therin was not the first to arrive after all.

The Da’shain were.

Barid sets off at a run towards the figure, channelling Air to help hold him upright, and then to lift his burden and lay it gently to rest on the scorched ground. The man’s clothes are torn and singed, and his eyes are wild with grief and terror and determination as he briefly looks at Barid, then turns to dive back into the vortex of darkness and debris.

“Wait!” Barid calls, catching the Aiel’s arm in as soft a flow of Air as he can manage. “Stop.” In another instant he is at the man’s side, replacing Air with his own hand and speaking with a calm he does not feel. “What is your name?” he asks, guiding the man to a seated position on the ground and wishing he were where Lews is, channelling and organising, rather than attempting to comfort.

“Charn. I—I am Charn, sworn to Mierin Sedai. And—I failed her, I was too late, too late…” He is weeping, and Barid forces himself to breathe steadily against the icy shock of those words. _Too late_. This is not what they have been promised. This is not how it is meant to end. This was meant to be a beginning.

“Thank you for your service, Charn. You have done well.” He should say something soothing, should not ask anything, but he has to know. “Did you see her? Mierin Sedai? Is she…?”

Charn shakes his head, fresh tears spilling from his eyes. “No. I couldn’t see her, I don’t know…I’m sorry. I was too late and there were so many—so many others…”

So many others fallen, Barid hears unspoken. So many others dead. It is almost too much for his mind to encompass, but he does not need to comprehend it now. Answers and understanding can come later; for now, he needs to act. He wants to run into the heart of the darkness, wants to find Mierin, if she is alive, before anyone else can, but he knows he cannot. He calls over a young Restorer, tells him to help Charn and any other Da’shain he can find, and then instructs the rest of his team to fan out across from Lews Therin and the other Aes Sedai, to encircle the blast zone as best they can.

He loses all sense of time to the relentless channelling, extinguishing fire and circulating air and trying to bolster crumbling walls and pillars. Shifting stone and _cuendillar_ off of broken bodies, guiding too many injured to safety, and pushing constantly against the dark fog, trying to find something that will dispel it, or return it to the tear in the sky. But channelling against it at all feels strange, as if _saidin_ is somehow different here. Impossible, of course. Unless…could Mierin have succeeded in finding the power she sought, even as everything collapsed around her? Something like laughter thrums deep in the wind around him and he shakes his head to clear his eyes and his thoughts.

But the swirling darkness finally begins to ebb and thin as the sky burns to dusk, and at last he sees her, standing at the centre of the fallen Sharom with her arms outstretched, palms facing the sky and pouring darkness. Or drinking it in. There is a wildness in her eyes and shadows like firelight flickering across her face, but it is her expression that causes him to almost stumble. A mix of euphoria and terror, agony and delight.

“Mierin,” he whispers, but the sound is stolen in a gust of shadow, and she does not hear him, does not move.

“Mierin. Mierin!” He is running towards her without ever having decided to move, calling her name, and now there is another voice joining his. “ _MIERIN!_ ”

She jolts, gasps, falls to the ground amidst the fragments of the Sharom that shine like broken shell, and the blood where one of the edges cuts her arm seems too bright, too vivid against the white of her dress and the silver in her hair and the darkness that ripples, fading, around her. Away from her.

As it fades, so do the whispers, and even wrapped in the Void, Barid shivers. He turns at the sound of footsteps, and sees Lews Therin running towards them. Can he not see that he is the last person who should be approaching Mierin right now, with his expression full of confusion and disappointment? For an instant he is seized by an almost overpowering urge to shove the man away, to seize _saidin_ and fling him aside, to—

Mierin stirs and the strange moment snaps as both he and Lews turn to her, each holding out a hand to help her to her feet. She looks from one to the other and then ignores them both, gracefully pushing herself to her feet. Regal and proud and silent, she is almost successful in masking any trace of fear as she takes in the devastation around her.

 “Mierin,” Barid says, drawing her attention and her gaze, trying to break the tension already growing between her and Lews. “Are you hurt?”

It is not the question he wants to ask, but looking at her now, he knows it is the only one he can. The others must wait.

“What happened?” Lews asks, speaking over the end of Barid’s question too quickly for Barid to do anything but listen with a flash of frustration that flits between despair and anger. “Mierin, what have you done?”

Impassivity collapses into an expression he has never before seen on Mierin’s face, and it takes him a moment to recognise it as pain. With a scream that threatens to shatter the sky all over again, she spins a gateway and steps through it onto a Skimming platform, letting it close behind her faster than thought.

Lews is there in two quick strides, and Barid feels him seize _saidin_ , knows what he intends to do as he begins tracing the residues. He reaches out with Fire and Spirit and slices the flows without a second thought, standing his ground as Lews turns to him, eyes flashing anger.

“Let her go.”

Lews turns away, reaching again for _saidin_ to continue spinning a gateway, and looks back at Barid in furious astonishment when he realises he is shielded.

“I said _let her go_ ,” he says quietly, holding Lews Therin’s gaze. For a moment there is immense pressure on the shield he holds, but he stands fast. And then the pressure ceases, and Lews drops his eyes.

“You’re right,” he says wearily. For a moment the space of a sigh, he looks tired, defeated, afraid. Then he gathers himself, authority and efficiency enveloping him like a cloak. “Come,” he says, his voice steady and commanding. “We must help the survivors. And figure out who is still—missing.”

There is only a split-second’s hesitation before that last word, and Barid realises he has not seen Ilyena, either.

Lews sets off towards where the survivors and the injured have been gathered, not even looking back, as if he knows Barid will fall in a half-step behind him as ever.

As they get closer, Barid finds himself searching the faces of those who have been pulled from the ruins, and knows Lews is doing the same. There are absences. Too many absences.

“Where is Ilyena?” Lews asks, too quietly for anyone but Barid to make out the panic edging his voice, at the same moment Barid himself speaks into the empty darkness, “where is Elan?”

As if the questions themselves are a signal, he watches as a sunhaired woman steps through a gateway behind the survivors. Lews all but runs to her, leaving Barid with the rest.

He looks away, towards the ruins of the Collam Daan. And sees a figure standing in front of the in one of the doorways he had been certain were empty, silhouetted by the still-burning dark flames, and for a moment he is afraid. Then the figure steps forward and it is Elan, taking in the scene with an unreadable expression on his face.

***

 “You dreamed this.” She throws the words at Elan like an accusation and a plea.

It is only months since the shattering of the sky, but everything has changed. Imperceptibly to most, but Ilyena is practiced at seeing entire galaxies in a single string of numbers or a tiny burst of light, and the patterns are as clear to her as sunlight. She still lacks a name to put to the darkness that is seeping into the world, but she can feel it coming closer every day, spiralling in on a collapsing orbit, and she fears that collision, fears for the Light. Something is desperately wrong, and she feels as if she is fumbling in the dark once more, only this time without even starlight to guide her way.

He laughs in a single, bitter exhale devoid of humour. “Does it matter now, what I dreamed before?”

 _You should have told me_ , she doesn’t say. She knows he told Barid at least pieces, and from something Lews said – _I should have listened_ – she knows Elan tried to tell him too. But would she have listened any more than Lews did? Any more than Barid did? She, who all but ignored her own visions, speaking of them to no one because she preferred to ask her questions of the heavens rather than answering the ones they posed to her? She who tried to take refuge in the illusory certainty of research, hiding away from flickering visions wreathed in fire and agony and things she could not name?

She can name too many of them now; she is learning new words for pain and calamity every day, it seems.

She desperately wants to know his dreams, to know if they align with her visions. The only other Dreamer she might have asked threw herself from the tallest tower in Shorelle five days ago – _suicide_ is not a new word to her, but she had only ever used it before for stars gone nova. There are other Dreamers, others with the Foretelling, but none she knows as well as she knows Elan. None who would speak to her of what they have seen, if they have seen anything like what she has.

Even Elan may not. As he holds his silence and her gaze, she knows with sudden certainty that he has not shared any of his dreams since the shattering. Not with anyone. She can read it in the tightness of his eyes, in the tension of his shoulders, in the withdrawn pain of his expression, and she fears for her friend.

But Elan is not one to open up to comfort, so she crosses the room to where he keeps his _sha’rah_ board, and lays it out on the table, sitting across from him as she sets each piece carefully in its starting position. He watches her without saying a word.

“If I win,” she says, turning the Fisher over and over in her hands, “will you tell me one of your dreams?”

“Why would I do that?” he asks, raising an eyebrow in a look that would be mocking if it contained anything more than apathy.

“Humour me.”

“And when I win?”

“An answer to any question you wish to ask.”

There is no reason for him to agree to such terms, and they both know it. He could tell her to leave, could tell her his Dreams are none of her concern, could ask her his questions anyway in the name of friendship. Instead he stares at her for a moment, as if weighing her possible motivations and manipulations, then places the first red piece with a shrug. That he has agreed to play at all tells her almost everything she needs to know.

That he is not playing to win tells her the rest.

Of course, neither is she. She is playing to watch. He is a master of the game, but she has practiced against one who seems to grow more strongly _ta’veren_ each day, and she knows how to manipulate the board into unusual configurations, to lay paths behind traps, to leave open only as many options as she wishes, so that she can watch which ones he takes.

And when she locks him in to an untenable situation, when she holds the Fisher and has nearly won, he responds with _tarmon mar_ , the reckless all-out attack that may salvage a win, but at the cost of everything. So.

He meets her eyes for a moment after he has annihilated all of her green pieces, leaving the board in victorious chaos, and she knows he has seen what she has. It is not the answer she came here for, but it is undoubtedly an answer. Desperation, destruction, inevitability.

“My question, then,” he says calmly, sweeping the board clean and setting it aside, all traces of the game erased in an instant. “Why do you wish to know my dreams?”

He could have asked a thousand questions more probing, more informative, but that has never been Elan’s way. He has always been able to read as much in a simple response as she can in an entire game. Or in the infinitesimal movements of a single star. She could not have asked for a better opening, but still she hesitates, as if speaking the words she knows she must say is as much a risk as _tarmon mar_ in this game that is still ongoing, though the table is clear.

“Because they might help me understand my own.”

That takes him aback, though he masks his surprise almost instantly. “You’re no Dreamer.”

“A poor Dreamer,” she says, twisting the truth by a single syllable. “But now I wish I had understood them sooner, and heeded their warnings…Elan, I am afraid.”

“What did you dream? What do you dream?”

“Disaster,” she whispers, making her last play and hoping she has guessed correctly. And for the second time she sees his eyes widen in surprise and, more importantly, recognition before he controls his expression.

Then he looks to the _sha’rah_ board, and back to her, and once more laughs that mirthless laugh. “I underestimated you,” he says dryly, shifting the Fisher onto one of her green squares in a formal gesture of forfeit. “Very well. Ask.”

“What do you dream now?”

He looks up at her, eyes full of shadow. “The end of an Age.”

***

In truth, he dreams the end of everything, the inevitability of oblivion. He dreams reality shattering like the Sharom; pain from an Age so distant it could be past or future or both, but unmuted by time; a sea of endless darkness. And as time passes, the pain and terror of those dreams fade, and the shadow deepening over waking reality feels less and less like a threat, and more and more like a refuge. Not a shelter from the storm, but a shelter within the storm itself.

He wonders sometimes if this is what Ilyena sees in her distant darkness. She has described it as a support, an anchor, a presence that makes everything make _sense_. He sees an explanation where once there was ignorance and blind acceptance of a world with only light and absence. He wonders sometimes, watching her, if the shadow that clarifies in his understanding every passing day, and clarifies his understanding of everything, is the same as the dark matter she so loves. But there is a brightness to her that he cannot reconcile with what he is coming to understand about the shadow that begins to fill even his waking hours.

He still sees her brightness in his dreams, dimmed to nothingness, paling against a blinding burst of light that is darker than any shadow he knows.

It is one dream he never shares with her, no matter how many times he sees it, though he gives her fragments of others over games of _sha’rah_ that she seems to enjoy, even if she never wins. Instead she seems to lay out questions in the configurations of pieces she knows she will lose. He cannot read the questions themselves, but he never again lets her draw him into attempting _tarmon mar_. And she never speaks of her research. They both step carefully in this new dance of secrets, neither quite certain of their footing in the shifting terrain, and both searching for answers.

Lews is more brazen, ever a bolt of lightning beside Ilyena’s sunlight. Why he expects Elan’s dreams to make a difference now, when he waved them off so lightly before, Elan cannot truly understand. But Lews Therin Telamon has always scorned the very concept of inertia, preferring to create his own momentum. Well that he is _ta’veren_ , then, but surely even he can see that he is trying to dam the ocean with his cupped hands. They all are. He sees hints of doubt in some, and frustration in others, but in Lews Therin there is nothing but certainty and determination, now given a focus, like the Fisher finally being brought into play, unaware of a world beyond the board where greater powers move.

He wonders if any of them see it, see how they are all being laid out like pieces on a board that encompasses far more than a lifetime or an Age. He wonders, and he watches. He watches across the years as the world descends, watches and writes, and listens to the Shadow call to him every night in his dreams with a voice like the shattering of a world.

And when the dreams become all but unbearable he follows that voice to its source, and finds power, a promise, and answers.

Others join him, slowly and secretly, and he makes that journey more than once, each time understanding more.

Meanwhile Lews Therin Telamon and Barid Bel Medar rise quickly through the ranks of society, gaining fame and gaining responsibility, trying to solve a problem they cannot even define. And for what? For the thankless and impossible task of returning the world to the peaceful stasis of ignorance? They are too busy looking backward, blinded by the too-bright past, to see the inevitability of what lies ahead. He has looked back further than they, back far enough to glimpse the endless cycle of the Wheel of Time, far enough to begin to see the full scope of that futility.

They turn stubbornly from inevitability, taking false refuge in the fading light of denial as if by renouncing the storm they can will it out of existence. He will seize inevitability as he once seized _saidin_ , though he follows a different power now. One that does not muffle his thoughts in ineffective emptiness, but drowns them in cacophony. One that can neither be seized nor surrendered to, though all will soon surrender before it. No, as Mierin so spectacularly demonstrated, it must be _sought_. And as it echoes in his ears with the rending of reality, he knows the time has come.

It is time for the Shadow to be brought to their daylight, time for them to know that what they face is the end of time itself.

***

 “ _Ishamael_ ,” Lews Therin spits, hurling the accusation at the man who was once his friend, and who now stands before the Hall of Servants calling for the destruction of everything. Naming the enemy that has been a shadow over their lives these past years, but naming it as a benevolence, an ally, a force not to be resisted but appeased.

Elan Morin Tedronai only nods, bowing his head and opening his arms as if to accept the title. Betrayer of Hope. Then, with not the slightest trace of _saidin_ in the air, a gateway opens in front of him and he steps through, vanishing without another word.

The Hall erupts in chaos.

Voices around him rise like wind, like a storm, weeping and anger, questions and despair, accusations and determination and a few quiet murmurs that perhaps Tedronai is right. And in the silent centre stands Lews Therin Telamon, wishing he could follow the man who has betrayed them, wanting to sear the darkness away from him with the brightest lightning he can call.

But he cannot. Elan’s – _Ishamael’s_ gateway has not even left a residue in the air. He is gone. He was gone long ago, the time for mourning past before Lews even felt the loss. Now he must hold his rage and stand his ground, and convince the world that hope remains.

Within days, he is named to the High Seat.

***

 “Why, Elan?”

“They have a different name for me now.”

“I know. _Ishamael_ ,” she says, testing the syllables and wondering.

“Then you know why.”

She forces herself not to reach out her hand to him, stifles the pity that tries to show on her face. _Did you betray hope, Elan, or did it betray you?_

“So that’s it,” she says instead, matching her voice to the ice in his. “Darkness and oblivion, and abandoning all hope wasn’t enough – you had to rob everyone else of it, too.”

“The Wheel of Time has turned on false hope for too long,” he says, turning away. “It cannot support itself any longer. You are an astronomer; you know what happens when light reaches a horizon.”

“You think there is no turning back? You will not even try to stand against this, to save what can be saved?”

“I told you I dreamed the ending of an Age,” he says softly.

“Dreams are not always truth. You know that.”

He laughs, cold and humourless. “What do you know of dreams? Ilyena Sunhair, Silvertongue – you have never dreamed true.”

“So now you think yourself omniscient.”

“Not I, though I know far more now than you could imagine. It could be yours, Ilyena. Wouldn’t you want to know the truth of your darkness? Do you not still seek answers? Those who seek are rewarded.”

She steps back as he faces her once more, lips curled in a smile that is not a smile. For the first time since coming here, she is afraid. She does not have to fake the tremor in her voice.

“What has this _Shai’tan_ promised you, Elan? For one who scoffs at hope, you place a great deal of trust in his hands.”

“Is that what you think. Come with me; I can show you.” He holds out a hand, and she remembers something he said to her once, years ago. _I dreamed that you would dance with me_. His eyes hold even less mirth now than they did then, but for a moment she wishes she could take his hand, could spin into the familiar dance, could realign their orbits and make everything once more as it was.

She shakes her head sadly. “No, Elan. That is not my darkness.”

He shrugs, a perfect picture of indifference, and she cannot tell if he is feigning. There is a distance between them now, vast as the emptiness of space for all that they are close enough to touch. “Then go. But If you ever wish answers…”

“I know. Goodbye, Elan.” She spins a gateway before he can correct her again. It is not to Ishamael that she is bidding farewell.

***

She is not the only one to find him in the time that follows his announcement, but she is the only one to leave without pledging herself to the Shadow, to him. Killing is inelegant, but it is not long before Nemene Damendar Boann renders it largely unnecessary, and soon she joins him in accepting a different name altogether. A fourth name, given in scorn but still given.

Many who joined him before, in secret, follow his announcement with proclamations of their own, by word or by deed. Where this golden Age has stagnated, gorged on light and illusory paradise, they innovate, exploring the arts of war and subterfuge, sowing seeds of chaos and reaping the harvest in ashes and blood.

Of course, there are the ones who seek to supplant him, failing to understand the true aim. Those, he kills. And there are the agents of the Light, sent to turn the Shadow’s arts against him, to assassinate or spy or subvert. Those, he keeps. They have already taken the first steps, after all, and it does not take long for them to see a different truth.

Still others begin trying to sue for peace, as if he wants something as simple as war.

In a world spiralling ever-faster, he watches Barid and Mierin, watches Ilyena.

Lews Therin is lost to him, but that happened long ago. Longer ago than either of them remembers. Barid will come, in time; there are some who only gain their true strength in shattering, and he has seen the trapped power beating against the fracture lines Barid has never quite managed to hide. Fracture lines that will fall away like bars of a cage when Barid finally breaks. Mierin will join him sooner, he is certain. She has long trembled on the edge. And Ilyena…he wonders still at her fascination with celestial darkness. He toys with the idea of telling Lews about their meetings, but in the end decides a secret held is worth more than a secret revealed, for now. Lews Therin Telamon will be the last to break, but his breaking could shatter the world. His breaking could set the Shadow free. For that, Ishamael can be patient.

And so he waits. And still he dreams.

He dreams again the endless darkness, but now it ends in a rushing, blinding light, and a sense of spinning, forever spinning, image and sound and reality swelling to a crescendo that rakes at him before darkness falls once more without warning and then it begins again, and again, and again—

Night after night he wakes in the breath before a scream, and no matter how many times the dream recurs, its meaning is lost in the chaos of searing noise and deafening light and muffled by the darkness.

***

Her marriage to Lews Therin Telamon is as much a declaration of loyalty as of love. They have had many years of happiness without an official designation, and she has been wary of formalising it ever since Elan’s…ever since Ishamael, afraid of further unbalancing an already fragile orbit. Barid, Mierin, Lews, her. Without Elan, it is as if gravity has shifted, as if with a single false step the rest of them could spiral out into nothingness, irreparably adrift. It is, she finds herself thinking, like her own equations before she found the darkness: filled with emptiness and fraying at the edges, no matter how bright the central star.

They called her their sun in laughter and perhaps even in truth, but Elan was their anchor, the darkness to balance their brightness, and just as she can only find dark matter by tracing the dance of the stars, she only understands this now that she can see what their gravity does in his absence.

They are falling apart, and with so much collapsing around them, with divisions spreading like the cracks in the Sharom, threatening to shatter society and unity and hope, in the face of darkness, she turns to a pledge of love and light. Yet even as she says the words she knows they are not enough.

Barid is unusually quiet, his eyes tight with anger; she knows he is still wounded by the loss of Elan, and by what he has too long perceived as the loss of _her_. He is caught in the shifting orbits, perhaps even more so than she, but he dances as gracefully as ever.

It is Mierin who falls away first. Mierin, who started it all. At least that is how the story has begun to be told, though already it is changing to incorporate Ishamael. And there are the untold versions, the versions narrated only by Ilyena’s notes and observations, and the discussions with Elan and Mierin as she was still looking for answers, still searching in darkness for darkness and the anchor of light. The versions where Ilyena was the beginning, for without her discovery would Mierin have thought to look for the darkness between worlds, for the power held outside the fabric of the Pattern? If she herself had not begun by following in the research of Tykal Brahen Olasi, if he had not refined the far-seeing telescopes, if…there are no beginnings and endings, and she wonders if Elan is right. If this has happened a thousand times a thousand times before, and they are only following the steps of a dance long ago choreographed, set to celestial music they can only strive to hear.

But it is Mierin who has gained a strange dubious fame, a volatile mix of notoriety and pity that would be intolerable to one with even half her pride. Quicksilver, brilliant, beautiful Mierin, who sought knowledge but yearned for everything, dances with Ilyena with hatred in her eyes and calls down lightning. Soon after, she abandons her name for the third she was never granted, a third she has instead claimed for herself. _Lanfear_. Daughter of darkness, daughter of the night.

The night that once bound them now separates them; Ilyena observes the darkness, while Lanfear has become a creature of it. For Ilyena still visits her observatory, still visits the now-familiar embracing darkness, but it feels so much heavier now, its gravity an inexorable pull where there was once a gentle anchor. The stars burn as brightly and the dark matter between them is as steadfast as ever, and her equations flow with ease, untangling the mysteries of the universe. But looking into the night feels like fleeing the darkness here, a much closer and heavier Shadow, and one she cannot begin to balance, try though she might to find the numbers to describe its chaos. How can there be balance to emptiness? How can it do anything but consume?

But without it…

She pushes her meaningless pages of computation aside, and goes to the only place she can find answers.

***

 “What is the balance?”

“It’s considered polite to chime. I could have been standing there.”

“Then be grateful I’m not someone who wishes you were.”

He lets himself smile faintly for an instant before he turns to see her lounging in one of his chairs as if she belongs here. He has wards set across the entire space, of course, but sees no reason to inform her that her attempt at a dramatic entrance came far closer to killing her than to harming him. Besides, it is entirely possible she knows about the wards; in that case, either she is desperate enough to take a potentially fatal risk, or she has some way of knowing she will not be harmed. He is not foolish enough to assume the former, convenient as it would be.

 “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks, sweeping a precise bow, playing her game.

“I’ve come for the answers you promised,” she says flatly. “You say your Shadow is like my dark matter. The darkness I know anchors the light; yours does nothing but distort and destroy. So where is the balance?”

“Surely you, with all your talent for deceit, can tell the difference between promise and implication,” he says nonchalantly, taking the seat opposite her and pretending to ignore the look of mingled anger and frustration she shoots him.

“I did not come to play word games with you, Elan.”

No one has called him that in decades now, and she says it seemingly without thinking. She is not yet lost to him, it seems. _Or_ , says a thought he tries to ignore, _she thinks you are not yet lost to her_. Perhaps she is simply needling him. There is calculation behind everything she says to him – there always has been – but he knows better than to assume he sees her true aims. Sometimes he wonders if she herself knows. It is much like how she plays _sha’rah_ , manipulating the board as if it is her research, asking questions and observing the responses and only then determining her next step. It makes her vulnerable. It makes her dangerous.

“A more relevant game, then?” He reaches for the _sha’rah_ board and lays it on the table in front of them. Ilyena glances at the pieces, left as they were when his last game was interrupted.

“Haven’t had any worthwhile opponents lately, have you?” she asks dryly, knocking one of the poorly placed pieces over with a fingernail. “Do we play for answers?”

“Why should I give you anything?”

“We both know the answer to that,” she says, holding his gaze as she takes the Fisher and places it carefully in the centre of the board.

“You can have your answers,” he says, knowing before he finishes the suggestion that she will refuse, but sometimes the best games begin with standard opening plays. He moves his first red piece. “I can take you to where you will learn all you wish to know and more.”

“In exchange for swearing myself to your Great Lord of the Dark. In exchange for being trapped like you.”

“Trapped? I am free.”

“Is that what he has promised you?”

Her tone is light, and she does not even look at him as she speaks, instead studying the board before making her first play. It is not one of the four standard openings, but from her it would be more strange if it were.

“And what if I told you he has promised me nothing?”

“Then I would say my dreams show you to be a liar.”

He laughs wryly. There are few, very few, who would speak to him so. But she knows why she is here, and it makes her bold. Perhaps he should correct her assumption. No. It would be a waste to kill her, and even harming her would mean revealing his game far too early.

He has toyed with the notion of making her a spy, but decides against it every time. It would only provide greater temptation for her to turn double-agent. As it is, he knows his secrets are mostly safe with her, because hers must be with him. it is a delicate arrangement, and any push too far could shatter it, and she is too valuable for that. Better to let her attempt to play her own game, if she believes she can. She poses few risks, and she will serve his ends regardless.

They fall into the rhythm of the game, and it is a welcome change from followers who believe they are playing _tcheran_ and opponents convinced it is _no’ri_. How much Ilyena truly understands, he cannot fully gauge, but he knows she is still searching, still observing, still asking questions. She is a scientist, not a general, and it is what makes her games interesting. She knows the rules but seems to never have learned the myriad strategies and counterstrategies and set patterns of play. He has long since moved past those, of course, but for most players they are an essential step on the way to mastery. Yet instead of rendering her play amateur and predictable, as it would anyone else, it lends her a certain capricious grace. He lays traps that she never sees until they begin to close, and then she dances away, sacrificing too many pieces but still drawing his across the board in patterns that may lack efficiency but make up for it in elegance.

She still does not win, but it puzzles him at first that she can even keep pace with him for the course of a full game. And then he sees it. She does not play to win. From the beginning, she cares nothing about the end, and it frees her to play a truly unfettered game.

The only question is why.

***

They always play for answers, even when they do not play at all. She knows he is using her, and is all but certain he knows she is interrogating him, though neither acknowledges as much beyond layered words and the movement of pieces on the _sha’rah_ board that reminds Ilyena of the now-abandoned dancefloors of their past. How simple those dances and days now seem, when the five of them had only each other for rivals and no words for enemy.

Now she dances a dance far more dangerous, suspended between enemies as old as time itself **,** between gravities greater than Lews Therin Telamon or Ishamael, despite deceptive appearances. That much, she has been able to decipher from the hints Elan lets fall, and from the visions she now strives desperately to understand. A blinding brightness that flashes across Lews’s face, obscuring his features. Black flames shadowing and guiding Elan’s hands.

Her visits are rare from the start. She knows the risks, knows that in all probability they are not outweighed by whatever nebulous benefits she could claim. She knows how imbalanced everything already is, knows that even a slight misstep could topple the entire system. She is wary of being drawn in too far, wary of what Ishamael may do if he leaves Elan too far behind.

Every time she sees him, it seems as if the darkness around him has deepened. He is quicker to anger, quicker to sneer. She watches him and wonders if it felt like an epiphany, when his capacity for cruelty was given freedom and purpose.

“You will never win like that,” he says once, sweeping an impatient hand across the board and scattering the last remnants of order left to their game. It is an answer, like all the rest, but from then on she is more cautious than ever in how she poses her questions.

Every time she sees him, it is harder to leave. And even harder to return. But she cannot bring herself to let that fine thread snap, even when she has long since accepted that it will never be enough to pull him back.

Still, her visits grow ever rarer, and soon it has been years. Initially she grants herself the excuse of pregnancy; her channelling is unreliable at best for a time, and she is not about to take a jo-car to visit the Shadow’s most prominent figure.

After that…after that, it takes her much longer to admit to herself that she is trying to deny reality. To admit that she and Lews are both trying to pretend, for as long as they can, that the new joy in their lives heralds the end of a worldwide struggle. It is a flimsy illusion, of course, and one all too easily dispelled by news of another disaster, another betrayal, another massacre, another city fallen, another vision of darkness pressing in against fleeing sparks of fading light. A flimsy illusion, but there is solid reality in the joy beneath it, and for that alone she knows she made the right choice. To forsake such long-awaited joy would be to accept defeat, to admit that there is no future.

But she can no longer deny that something more terrible is coming. She sees it in her flickering visions of blinding fire, in the set of her husband’s face, in the numbers and equations she has begun to tease from the darkness into which Mierin so fatefully drilled. The world is preparing for war, a forgotten notion that has become an inevitability.

She shivers at the thought, and at the vision that accompanies it, but she does not push it away.

When war first begins, it is almost indistinguishable from what they had convinced themselves was peace. Then the balefire is unleashed, and the illusion shatters as whole cities are burned not to ash or dust but to no more than fragments of memory.

Frozen by the threat of imminent oblivion, the world relinquishes that fateful fire, but still the Shadow pushes forward, relentless, and Lews stands against it with everything he has, the Light blazing defiant even in retreat.

There is little hope of turning the tide, but there are questions she can still try to ask, answers she can still try to use. But she knows as soon as she steps through the gateway that it is too late to resume as they were; she has waited too long.

 “Are you here to accept my offer, Ilyena? Are you ready to take your oaths to the Shadow?”

“No. No, I—”

“Then we have nothing more to say to each other. Congratulations, by the way. I would apologise for not sending a gift, but I am sure you understand.”

“Elan—”

“ _DON’T CALL ME THAT_ ,” he shouts, whirling, and a ball of fire misses her by inches. For a moment neither of them moves, not even to put out the flames that begin licking up the wall behind her. For a moment, they simply stare at each other, the air between them sharp with anger and waiting.

“Go,” he finally says, his voice soft and dangerous. “Go, before I change my mind.”

She flees.

***

It is only after she has left that he realises the Fisher is missing from the board. He laughs a true laugh, then. So her nerve has not broken after all. For that he is glad; she would ruin everything if she shattered now.

When she appears without warning from any of his wards, he realises he has underestimated her once again. He had thought it simply a message – a severing of ties, an indication of possession, a defiance. But a stolen object, taken from inside the wardings…yes, he can begin to see how she turned it into a key. It is a clever trick, from one who has refused to help design weapons, refused to help strategise or prepare for war.

“I am an astronomer,” she says with what seems a practised shrug when he asks her why. “What do I know of battles and weapons and war?”

“More than they give you credit for—”

“—‘So swear yourself to the Great Lord of the Dark and he will give to you what others have denied’?” she finishes, raising an eyebrow. “That may have worked on Duram Laddel Cham, but it won’t work on me.”

“Perhaps I simply want a worthy opponent.”

Her faint smile vanishes. “I am not your enemy, Elan,” she says quietly.

 _No_ , he thinks, _you are just another piece on the board_. One he will hold in his possession for as long as he can, to send like a bolt of lightning at Lews Therin Telamon when the time comes. She will be the piece that captures the Fisher, and for that he will allow her now to dance across the board, believing herself to be free.

***

 “Decume, the air forces are yours. Keep communications open as long as you can. Aellinsar, you command the central attack. Medar, hold the walls. If they take the city they will be able to surround us.”

Barid nods, grinding his teeth but keeping his expression a mask of outward calm. They are almost the exact words he spoke to Lews Therin in private, now echoed back to him as an order in front of all the other commanders.

 _I give you victory after victory_ , he thinks coldly, _and in return you take every chance you get to remind us all where you stand._ But it does not matter now.

From the start, Lews Therin turned his suggestions to orders and handed him field commands like charity, took victories won only by Barid’s quick thinking and ingenuity as a matter of course and berated him if he ever delivered competence in place of brilliance.

He wondered, at first, if Lews even saw what he was doing. Competition had become such a habit with him – with both of them – in their earlier years that it perhaps it was inevitable. But as fury cooled to icy anger, he decided it did not matter. Either Lews Therin truly was arrogant enough to believe and cruel enough to mock, or…

Didn’t matter? No. It matters everything, because ‘or’ is worse and ‘or’ is truth. Lews Therin does not see his faults. Lews Therin does not condescend with the aim of provoking or taunting, but because he does not even consider the possibility that Barid Bel could ever be his equal, and condescension is merely propriety when it suits the status quo. Lews Therin sees no insult in his words or deeds, for if none equal him, what insult can there be in simple truth? What arrogance can there be in a man who knows without doubt or hesitation that he is their only hope? Lews Therin possesses every ounce of that arrogance, but it is the arrogance of ignorance that masquerades as humility and is praised as heroism.

Competition, Barid would have welcomed. Cruelty, he could have withstood. It is the gracious certainty in Lews Therin’s eyes that he cannot abide.

He chooses his team carefully.

Like so many battles before, it begins well, lightning and fire and all the bright terrible glory the Light can command burning against a tide of Shadow. Like so many battles before, it is almost enough.

Barid’s forces ring the city and fill its towers, and he watches from above as the army of the Light fights to push forward, then simply to hold. Watches from above as Lews Therin Telamon himself takes to the field and spins death. Watches and waits for the moment of equilibrium, the moment on which the battle will turn. Watches as Lews Therin and his forces strain against the first inevitable step back.

Creatures of the Shadow surge against the walls, and are killed by sho-wings and shocklances and lightning. Creatures of the Shadow surge against the walls, and sho-wings fall from the sky. Creatures of the Shadow surge against the walls, and shocklances meet Thakan’dar steel. Creatures of the Shadow surge against the walls, and lightnings follow.

The storm breaks and Lews Therin takes a single step back, looking in something that almost resembles desperation – no, it is simply expectation – to where Barid stands. Looking for rescue, knowing it will come. As it always has.

Barid holds Lews Therin’s eyes as he spins the web that will carry his voice only to those under his command. And the web that will carry him away from this tower, from this doomed city, from battle after battle of inevitable defeat in a war that cannot be won.

“Attack,” he says quietly, and watches impassively from the wall as Lews Therin’s expression turns to confusion and then to the horror of realisation.

He had thought it would be more satisfying.

***

Ilyena observes his emotions more by their absence than their expression. He does not weep, does not rage, does not ask why. “Barid is gone,” is all he says, before sweeping a hand across his desk, sending papers and plans and maps and _ter’angreal_ scattering to the floor. But even that motion is economised, deliberate. It is not the first time he has had to make plans anew in response to unpleasant surprises, and she can almost feel the focus radiating from him, forcing out all the things he does not want to feel, to think. It is not the first time he has been betrayed by a friend, and she knows with sad certainty that it will not be the last.

She is nearly certain Ishamael means to turn the Dragon if he can, that the Shadow is focused not on destroying the Light’s centre and champion but on claiming him. And what better way, than to make sure he is alone?

So many he loves and has loved have turned from him. Their orbits have frayed, and where once they were drawn back together by bright gravity, circling in an elegant dance but never touching, they now spiral towards a collision, with nothing to hold them in place. Against the thousands who follow him, it seems a raindrop beside a river, but loyalty is not love.

“You have lost too many friends,” she says softly, turning his face towards her with a gentle hand.  “It is only human to grieve.”

“I don’t know how human the Dragon can afford to be,” he says softly.

His words hang in the air and Ilyena wishes she could dismiss them, but she cannot. Not when he shines with borrowed light, just as Elan radiates borrowed darkness. Lews’s words speak to her own fears, to her own growing certainties. That as the Shadow is consuming Elan Morin Tedronai and leaving behind only Ishamael, so shall the Light will consume Lews Therin Telamon and leave only the Dragon.

He burns so brightly, and Ilyena wonders what will hold him together now that so many bonds have broken, wonders what will keep him from scattering himself in light and dust across a world that cannot give him anything to hold on to. His only gravity is the war itself, and his single-minded determination to save the Light by throwing himself at the darkness with everything he has. His enemy has become his only anchor, and if that tether is broken either in victory or in defeat, the backlash could destroy them all.

***

Barid comes to him unsmiling, full of strength and cold fire, his anger sharper for having finally broken. Ishamael himself escorts him to Shayol Ghul, and watches as his hatred and envy are honed by ambition and shaped into a weapon more lethal than lightning. A weapon that has already pierced the Dragon’s armour, tearing opening a wound that must not be allowed to heal.

So Ishamael moves his pieces and wields his weapons carefully, making sure Lews Therin Telamon can never escape the enmity of those he once thought to love. Throwing those who have betrayed him into his path again and again, ever in sight and ever out of reach. There are many, and there will be more. There must be more, until betrayal is all he sees, all he feels, all he knows. Until he can do nothing but follow its path.

***

News spreads quickly of the events at the gates of Paaran Disen, jubilation following in rumour’s wake amongst a populus that has too long dwelt in despair. But it is the almost frantic joy of desperation, and it rings hollow against a recurring vision of light extending, fading, fraying. Like a pendulum the war will swing, but she knows momentum too well to ignore the…

She pauses as she thinks the word. _Inevitability_. Elan was right about that much, she is now certain. But she has spent almost as much time puzzling over her visions as she has with her telescopes and equations, and she has pieced together the fabric of an Age from fragments of calculations and insights and half-heard dreams, stitched together with the remnants of hope. 

Always her visions end in darkness. Always she sees glimmers of light, sometimes pinpricks and sometimes beacons, throwing themselves against a darkness that ripples as it swallows them but does not abate. But always, just as the vision fades, there is an instant where she can almost see the edges of her sight lighten like dawn.

Perhaps it is a mirage. Perhaps she is seeing only what she wants to see, and convincing herself it is reality. After all, she once thought those visions were guiding her towards discovery, towards answers. But was she so wrong? She did discover, and it is only through that discovery that she has been able to study the Shadow. It is only through understanding one darkness that she has begun to understand another. It is only through her study of balance that she has been able to consider necessity.

Momentum, necessity, inevitability. The words tumble through her mind, a private harmony against the chorus of elation that rings through the Light’s forces, through the Hall of Servants, rippling out across Paaran Disen and the world. A requiem for a falling Age, threaded through a song of celebration.

She watches the brightest stars this Age has to offer throw themselves again and again at the darkness that has always defied her measurements, and finally she understands **.** The world cannot be righted by the very ones who set this course. A world that has only known light is not a world that can defeat darkness. Those who dreamed it and could not even put words to what they saw, much less prevent it, those who dreamed it and denied – how are they supposed to fight something they have barely begun to learn? How can they even know fighting it is the answer?

They are not the ones to win this. They are merely the ones who must withstand it, to pave the way for those who will follow. So she will surrender to inevitability as she surrenders to _saidar_ , surrender to bring balance, surrender but never forsake hope.  

She slips away from the victorious to visit the defeated, knowing what she risks but knowing she must try, for who else is there? She alone is safe in the heart of the Shadow.

This time she chimes as she forms the gateway, spelling her identity in the soft sound of bells. When there is no response, she finishes the web and steps through anyway, her features a mask of calm and her fingers gripping the tiny Fisher piece in the pocket of her dress, praying it will be enough to protect her against his wardings.

He stands with his back to her, and she can read tension in every line of his figure.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you where you stand,” he says, his voice deadly soft.

It would force Lews’s hand, but she is certain that in this moment, Ishamael does not care. So she says nothing, but slowly extends her hand, palm up. As if sensing the motion, he turns.

“I owe you a dance,” she says.

“Then follow me.” He spins a gateway and she tries to keep from flinching as a flash of sickly light bursts from the air around the web whose flows she cannot see. Screaming, if light could be said to scream.

But she cannot falter now. So she steps through behind him, into darkness. For time uncountable, she walks behind him, down a tunnel of knife-sharp black stone. Once, he pauses to speak curt instructions to her, then continues on without so much as a glance back to see if she is following.

She follows. There is no light to guide her, no visions flickering on the edge of sight to tell her if she has made the right choice. Only her own certainty, and the knowledge that it was her choice to make.

Abruptly, the darkness changes. It does not abate, but is instead enhanced by the eerily dancing glow of a lake of fire that seems to appear without warning just ahead of her. Flames rise and die, and everything is awash in a twisted reflection of candlelight.

“There,” Ishamael points, and Ilyena steps carefully to the place he has indicated, close to the edge of the black stone path. Beyond that is nothingness, and then fire.

And in an instant all of it is gone, as something else fills her awareness.

WHY HAVE YOU COME?

Nothing could have prepared her for the way the voice grates against her, ringing through her ears and her mind and her entire self, until she feels as if this single question could shred her to ash and make her grateful for it.

“I come at the bidding of one of your Chosen.”

YET YOU BELONG TO MY ENEMY THE DRAGON.

“I belong to no one.” The words leave her lips before she can think to call them back, so focused is she on holding herself together against the onslaught of the voice – the _presence_ – in her mind. But the words are true, and for a moment they ground her.

The pain and ecstasy build to an intolerable peak as the voice rings out in derisive laughter.

THEN WHY HAVE YOU COME?

 _To surrender,_ she thinks. “To know your glory,” she says.

The laughter comes again, an onslaught in waves of fire amidst darkness that threads its way around her, through her, grasping, pulling, calling.

SO YOU ALREADY KNOW LIES. YOU COME WITH QUESTIONS.

She shivers as she nods. That at least is no lie.

MY CHOSEN ARE ALWAYS THE STRONGEST, ILYENA.

She knows immediately what _strongest_ means, and has to force down the flicker of relief within her at the knowledge that she is not strong enough, that she will be spared this one choice. It is a small relief, but she hides it deep, fearing that this entity of chaos and malice can see through to her soul, to even the smallest glimmer of the optimism that must surely be anathema.

STILL, YOU MAY YET PROVE YOURSELF. I CAN GIVE YOU THE ANSWERS YOU SEEK.

The words still sear her mind, but for a moment she knows relief, and it is all she can do to hold back laughter. _This_ is meant to be the irresistible temptation? A promise delivered in an impressive tone that nonetheless reverberates with the very essence of insincerity?

And then the voice thrums through her again, speaking not even in words but in promises and wishes and dreams and nightmares, tangled together in a tapestry woven with threads of black fire that burn with illusory gold.

ALL YOU MUST DO IS—

The darkness before her is filled with stars, and filled truth. Filled with _answers_. She can see the elegant curves tracing out orbits, can almost see the numbers, the explanations written in the script of galaxies. Understanding, true understanding of it all, the score to the music of the universe, is just _there_ , just a soul’s breadth away, tantalisingly close and filling her mind with a perfect clarity, with everything she has ever sought, everything she has ever wondered, the answers to a thousand questions she has never even thought to ask, and all she has to do is reach out to grasp it. All she has to do is

—SERVE.

The vision – the clarity, the knowledge, the _answers_ – is torn from her so violently it feels as if a part of herself has been ripped away, extinguished.

Involuntarily she lifts a hand, reaching for what has been taken. Reaching with her entire body, her mind, her self. And she feels for a moment as if she is falling, and all around her is darkness. But she has looked into the endless expanse of a far more ancient and enduring darkness, and into the hearts of stars that burn with greater fire.

The light cannot sustain her here, not now, not against this darkness – it is not something that can be fought, no matter how bright she burns. It will consume her if she tries. It will laugh as she burns away everything she has and everything she is, until she has nothing left to burn. It does not itself consume; it simply waits as the light strives against it until only ashes remain.

So this is the balance. The Shadow only consumes that which the Light burns. But now it is here too strongly, encroaching on an orbit that tried too hard to deny it, that had forgotten it and begun to drift apart.

It is not the answer that was held out as temptation on gossamer chains, but it is the answer she has been seeking. And she holds to it as she lowers her arms, draws herself back from the ledge.

She rests against that other darkness, filling her mind with the silence of space, the anchoring gravity. If it can hold the stars together, it must be enough to tether her soul to whatever light she has left, and keep her from scattering like a lost galaxy, brilliant and blazing and weightless and gone. So she embraces one darkness and faces another, trusting in the balance of gravity to hold her orbit stable and allow her to burn with what little light she can, perfectly balanced in darkness. She stands at the edge of the abyss on a platform of darkness and trusts in it to hold her fast.

OBEY AND BE REWARDED. DISOBEY AND BE DESTROYED. MY CHOSEN WILL SHOW YOU NO MERCY.

But she has withstood the promise of answers, the promise of everything. She is still standing, after it has been wrenched away, and she does not fall reaching for it. Against that, the threat of destruction is as weightless as starlight.

YOUR SOUL IS MINE, ILYENA.

She feels the voice like a hand raking across her soul, and all she can do is surrender, and it feels like an embrace.

YOU WILL SERVE ME, ILYENA. WHETHER YOU OBEY OR NOT. KNOW THIS AND CHOOSE.

She bows her head and makes her choice, for how binding is an oath to the patron of oathbreakers?

“I hear and obey,” she says calmly, speaking the words Ishamael gave her, and knowing Elan will not destroy her. That task will be her own.

***

DO WITH HER AS YOU WILL.

It is all the command Ishamael receives as Ilyena is released. He has experienced the Great Lord’s touch often enough now that he can retain his composure for the instant the command takes to be conveyed. Even if Ilyena were watching him, she would notice nothing.

Instead she is staring out across the fiery lake, with an expression of utter calm on her face, a calm so deep it looks like peace.

But then, he did not truly expect her to shatter here.

“Come,” he says.

He has the makings of a _cour’souvra_ with him, and as he brought her down the tunnel he thought of using it, but it would be a waste to chain her. That she will use the oath she only just barely swore to her own ends, he is all but certain. That she may break it, he does not think impossible. But it is of little consequence.

She has no strength to stand against him, no ability to halt the inevitable. She may be playing her own game, trying to play the world like _sha’rah_ , but she never did play to win. He can always destroy her, should the need arise. He still dreams her death, in a hundred variations, but never once has he dreamed her betrayal.

***

 “Lews asked me to speak to you.”

“To plead on his behalf. Tell him my answer is unchanged. Tell him the concord holds; those with the strength to join him will not, and I refuse to ask those without to sacrifice themselves to a cause that may damn us all.”

“I know.”

She has already begun shaping the first words of her argument when she stops, realising what Ilyena Moerelle has just said.

“You know? Then you are not here to plead his case?”

She shrugs, though Latra can see the effort such apparent nonchalance costs. “What could I say to you that he has not said already, and far more persuasively I’m sure? I am an astronomer; what do I know of war?”

“It is said you know much of shadow,” Latra says. There is bitterness in Ilyena Moerelle’s answering laughter.

“Would that I did,” she says finally, quietly. There is something odd in her expression and her voice, something Latra cannot quite interpret.

“You could join us. Your research has already proved invaluable, and there’s still too much we still don’t know. You are familiar with the outlines for the _sa’angreal_ we are trying to construct, I assume?”

“I am,” Ilyena Moerelle says, her voice flat and her face expressionless.

“I know you have no interest in designing weapons,” Latra continues warily, knowing she must tread carefully, “but we could use your help. Not designing; that stage is already nearly complete. But the amount of power these will help to channel…you have more experience than anyone with observing forces of such magnitude.”

“Stars and gravity and dark matter are not _saidin_ and _saidar_.”

“Of course not. But in terms of sheer power, we are looking on a scale that few could even imagine, much less comprehend and calculate. How far apart they must be kept, what kind of interference or resonance they may cause, the precise configuration of the access keys…I have seen some of the work you’ve done in calculating offsets and compensating for celestial gravitational anomalies when looking at a specific point so far away it should be impossible. You could—”

“If you understand it so well,” Ilyena Moerelle says coolly, “you hardly need me.”

Latra laughs ruefully. “I could only wish I understood it so well. I can just about follow the theory, but I can only understand enough to know that your understanding of forces even greater than the potential power of these _sa’angreal_ , and your ability to navigate them, is extraordinary.”

“Then here is the only advice I will give you. You are building something with the power to destroy the world as surely as any dying star. My advice, then? Do not presume you can control it at all.”

“We know the risks—”

“Do you?” Ilyena Moerelle asks quietly, and Latra has to force herself not to take a step back from the look in the other woman’s eyes. It is too easy to forget that the normally amicable Aes Sedai can burn like the sun she was named for.

“Is Lews Therin’s plan truly any less dangerous?”

“You want to try to control a supernova. He wants to skirt the edge of an event horizon. To put it in simpler terms: you want to walk into fire, and he wants to jump off a cliff. When those are the choices, does it matter which is less dangerous?”

“So you think there is no chance either way? No hope?”

“I did not say that.” Her tone is still serious but there is no more trace of anger and not even a hint of mockery on her face. “There is always hope. He is _ta’veren_ , and unless I am mistaken, so are you. Perhaps that will be enough to give one of you the chance you need. And if not…if not, we must find some other way. That is why I will not join you.”

Latra nods, and mourns the days when the Hall was unified.

“Then you will not join Lews Therin either, if he asks you?”

“He will not ask,” Ilyena Moerelle responds calmly, and Latra knows she speaks truly. For all her remarkable skill, Ilyena Moerelle’s strength in the One Power is such that participating in the Dragon’s plan would be suicide from her perspective, and murder from Lews Therin’s. He would never ask that of her, would never accept her putting herself in the path of certain death. They have all given everything they can to the defence of the Light, but all of them have sacrifices they are unwilling to make. Lately, she thinks perhaps that is all that separates them from the Shadow.  

“And you will not offer?” Latra has to ask. It will only take one woman to render the concord meaningless.

There is a long silence before Ilyena Moerelle finally speaks.

“No,” she says quietly. “I cannot be your champion, but I will not be your downfall.”

“What will he do?”

“What he thinks he must. As will we all.”

***

Ilyena wonders, in the days that follow, if she could have repaired the growing divisions in the Hall of Servants, had circumstances been different. Had she not been ordered to sow discord. Had she not believed every word she said. Had she not seen visions of all-consuming fire every time she so much as thought of the giant _sa’angreal_ Latra Posae Decume intends to have built.

She could have threatened to doom the Concord. She could have told Latra Posae that she would defy her, and join the Dragon in his mad attempt to seal the Bore. The other women would not have had a choice, then. Their Concord would be meaningless, and soon they would have no choice but to join her, and eventually to take her place. She could have forced their hand.

She could have bound them together with a lie, but in truth there were already too many cracks and too little gravity. The factions, the divisions, the disagreements – the discord is exacerbated by the Shadow but engendered by the Light itself, by the creeping recognition that this is not a fight they can win, by the attempts to deny that there is no path to outright victory.

For the sake of her family and the sake of the world, she wishes it were otherwise. But wishes are weightless as wind against visions of a thousand times a thousand paths, gleaming strands of sunlight spiralling out from a failing centre. There is no path, no matter how bright, upon which Shadow does not fall. Even her own soul is stained. But there are some thin threads that shine faintly on the other side of that darkness, and she turns her wishes to their offerings of a distant dawn.

She tells Ishamael what she knows of the _sa’angreal_ , and what little she can guess of their locations, and watches in mingled fear and relief as Light and Shadow are pulled into the orbit of the greatest weapons ever created like stones around a sun. And so long as they remain the focus of battle on all sides, they cannot be used to destroy the world.

It buys time. But not enough. So she does not try to dissuade Lews when he speaks of his plan. She tries not to see the darkness that surrounds him almost every time she looks. A new darkness, like and unlike those she has learned. A darkness whose flickering feels like fraying time.

There is so little time.

She looks for Elan and finds that Ishamael already knows almost everything she does of Lews’s intentions. She sees the fading remnants of dreams in his eyes and an aura around him that flashes only for an instant before it fades, a flickering vortex not of darkness but of _nothingness_ that flickers and leaves her reeling.

 “It is far too late for second thoughts,” he says almost lightly, mistaking her expression. He gestures for her to sit and casually moves a piece in the game of _sha’rah_ on the table between them, unfinished since their last meeting.  

“You have dreamed the end.” She says it as a certainty, and is rewarded by the faintest flash of uncertainty, the briefest second of hesitation.

“I dreamed the end a century ago,” he says coldly, as if to cover his barely perceptible surprise.

Ilyena nods, feigning nonchalance as she moves a green piece on the board. When she looks up, it is to see cruel incredulity on Ishamael’s face.

“You still love him,” he says. It is an act, she is almost sure – at least as much an act as the clear trap his red pieces are forming – but still his words and accompanying laughter tear at her, no less so for being true.

“Does it matter?” she asks, her voice and gaze and hands steady. “I know what must be done.”

He laughs again that humourless laughter. She knows he does not trust her, knows he plans to use her just as she intends to use him. Only time will tell, if indeed time survives to bear witness.

 “Lews Therin will fail,” he says harshly.

Ilyena nods. _But so will you_ , she does not say as she surrenders the Fisher and the game.

There is so little time, and all too soon it is time.

Lews does not ask her to follow him. She does not offer to go.

“Gather the others,” he says. “Protect them. You will all need to stand together if…if I…”

She presses a finger gently to his lips, silencing him. “I will gather them. It will be time for the Singing when you return.” She hardly hears what she is saying, wanting only to convince him that he will return. Perhaps his _ta’veren_ twisting of chance has pulled from her the words he needs to hear, for he nods and draws her into a tight embrace. _One last time_ , she tries not to think.

She kisses Lews farewell and watches the Dragon leave, silhouetted against the sunrise, until familiar darkness veils her vision and he is gone.

***

For an instant, an hour, an eternity, his entire being is focused on the flows of _saidin_ and the seven heartstone discs that make up his entire universe. Water and Fire, Earth and Air, Spirit and desperate hope, all weave into a tapestry of salvation here at the wound in the fabric of reality. There is no margin for error, no second chance.

And they are alone. More than half who set out remain, though too many fell as they fought their way inside, but for all their numbers they each stand alone against the darkness and the fire. There is no one to link them, no melding of the flows, no instantaneous coordination beyond their own trembling precision as layer after layer of the Power – of half the Power – is laid down.

For an instant, an hour, an eternity, the world hangs in the balance, past and present and future trembling across skeins of shadow and light. Then with a wordless cry that is half command and half prayer, he signals them all to release. For an instant, an hour, an eternity there is

 

 

s  i  l  e  n  c  e

 

_cacophony_

 

 

all the chaos of time crashing against his mind like thunder like the mountain collapsing all the chaos of time shattering around him like the earth shaking like lightning flashing in air too dark

waves of power coursing through and around him shouts and screams and laughter and burning as faces of his companions of shadowspawn of strangers of his companions flicker flicker flicker he holds up a hand to calm to kill to congratulate

lightning. fire. fraying time and screams and shattered stone.

He emerges into sunlight that is too bright and too dim, intolerable.

The ground shifts beneath his feet, stone to grass to dirt to ash to sand to stone once more. The ground shudders beneath his feet as he tries to hold it still, as he commands it to _stop_. It is stone, unshifting stone, with fracture lines splaying out from beneath his feet.

Only in shattering is time held constant.

He throws back his head and laughs, and the sky above him turns to storm to fire to wind to sun once more. Something flashes across the ever-changing sky and he reaches for it and it is falling in a cloud of flame and something inside him recoils in horror and something inside him laughs.

Only in falling is time held constant.

The ruins of an army surround him, bodies scattered across broken earth. But they, at least, are still. Their faces do not flicker, do not change.

Only in death is time held constant.

The faces of the living around him still flicker and shift; time is broken and they blur at the edges, fraying into too many faces different faces yet always the same expressions. He calls out, reaches out, lightning flashes out, and those nearest him fall into softly illuminated stillness. And then they simply fall, unchanging, to the unchanging ground.

The ones farther from him run or vanish and are lost to him, though he tries to call them back. He cannot free them if they flee.

But earth trembles and lightning falls like rain and they are gone.

He tries to Travel but the flows spin away to nothing time and again and so he walks, leaving broken stone and scorched earth and blazing sky behind him. He walks as cities rise and fall around him. He walks past a ruined city he has never seen, a ruined city whose every street he knows. No. There is no city here.

A city.

Paaran Disen.

 _Ilyena_.

In a single moment of clarity, bright and sharp as shattered glass, he Travels.

The web collapses in a sickening wave of _saidin_ as he steps through the gateway, but the city surrounds him, and he recognises the towers and spires. For an instant, and then they shift and fall and change and there is a roaring in his ears a thousand times a thousand voices screaming calling cheering crying and he lifts his hands to block the sound he lifts his hands—

He looks at his hands and they are bleeding they are dark they are pale they are emblazoned with his own scarlet Dragons like gleaming bloodstains they are young they are old they are his hands they are a stranger’s hands he is

Who is he?

“ _Lews Therin_!”

“ _The Dragon_!”

Names. _His_ names, in voices that ring out in cheering praise in voices that ring out in crying pleas.

“ _Telamon_!”

 “ _Lord of the Morning_!”

He is the Lord of the Morning, and he will free them from all the chaos of time.

But there are too many, too many faces that flicker around him, changing with every heartbeat, with every pulse of _saidin_. He cannot save them all. As if they can hear his thoughts, their voices change.

 _Ilyena_. In the surging crowd around him, he searches for her face. For all their faces.

He is the Dragon, and he will save those he loves from all the chaos of time.

“Ilyena, where are you?” In the fire and lightning around him, he seizes _saidin_ and searches for that instant of clarity that will take him to her.

He is Lews Therin Telamon, and something inside him is screaming.

In the screams songs shaking earth around him, a memory flashes golden. … _time for the Singing when you return_ …

They will be gathering, unaware that time is broken, that he has damned them trapped them saved them. But it is not too late to atone, to free them, to make it all _stop_.

The earth buckles beneath him and the wind rises around him and it is as if the Pattern itself resists as he bores a hole through, into an empty corridor of tapestry and stone.

***

This time Ishamael comes to her, stepping out of the air with eyes so full of fury they seem to shift to fire. Darkness swirls around him like a cloak, more eye-wrenching than fancloth, and it takes a moment to distinguish his edges beneath it, edges that seem almost to blur, or bleed.

“ _Madness_ ,” he says, and Ilyena fights to contain her horror as he describes something worse than nightmare. She almost thinks she sees even his face twist slightly in pain at one point, but…no. It is merely her imagination, struggling to make sense of…

She shakes her head and grits her teeth. She has survived the Shadow’s touch, and she will not break now. Not when everything hangs in balance and gravity itself trembles and a single breath of wind could determine the existence of a future.

“He will come here.” Her voice seems to reach her ears from a great distance, but it does not tremble.

Ishamael gives her a long, searching look. He does not trust her, she knows, but she also knows this is the chance he has been waiting for. A chance to throw her like a weapon into the path of his enemy, to strike the final blow that will send Light's champion spinning into Shadow.

She hopes she has read the game correctly. She hopes he sees, as ever, that there is no way for him to lose, and no way for her to win. She cannot hope to outplay him, cannot even truly hope to trick him, but she is not playing to win. She needs only to surrender.

“You know what must be done?” he asks, his expression still indecipherable as he holds her gaze.

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out two small rings, slips one onto her finger and hands the other to him. He arches an eyebrow and says nothing. Then understanding shows briefly on his face as she channels Spirit into the ring on her hand, causing the one resting in his palm to grow warm.

“There are two possibilities,” she lies. “Either I kill him, or… When I stop channelling Spirit into this, you will know.”

He looks at her with eyes that seem again to flicker with fire.

“You must not kill him,” he finally says.

Ilyena forces herself to show a faint expression of surprise, praying he will take it for truth.

“I understand,” she says, and it is all too easy to let a faint tremor slip into her voice. She draws a deep breath as if to steady herself. She holds starlight in her mind, and looks into Ishamael’s eyes. “I will…speak to him. I will hold him for you if I can. If not…the signal will be the same.”

It is a long time before he nods. And as he turns to leave, she almost thinks she sees Elan bow his head. But perhaps it is merely a trick of the light.  

***

He has glimpsed the darkness that has trapped the others, not the powerful darkness of the Shadow or the soft darkness of absence, but the nothingness of stasis, as the Wheel grinds on. He feels it pulling at him with every step he takes, and knows now what those dreams mean, knows he will lose his battle against this not-quite-oblivion, and will be pulled in and thrown out over and over and over—

Trapped, while his mind remains just free enough to see the chains closing around him. While Lews Therin walks free, trapped inside his own mind.

Lews Therin must turn. It is the only escape from the endless torment that awaits him.

***

Stone trembles as Ishamael leaves, and the air is full of memory, of familiarity, of sudden blazing inferno, and she Travels. The wind from the ocean dries the tears before they can fall from her eyes and a gentle sunset offers its embrace as she lets herself remember the last sane words he spoke to her. _Protect them_.

But there is no shelter from the end of an Age. No promise can protect them, but she can still protect those who will come after.

Her return is met by silence and a sense of stillness belied by the still-shaking ground. _I am too late_ , she thinks, but knows she is just in time. She could have stopped this, could have protected them, could have taken his already blood-soaked hands and led him into Shadow.

“Ilyena?” A broken voice breaks the silence and nearly her resolve. She longs to stay here, in the stone-bound denial of this empty corridor, for she knows what awaits her when she leaves.

It is one thing to know, and another thing entirely to see. Childhood friends, entombed in melted stone. Her father, peaceful as sleep but for the fear twisting his face.

She flits from gateway to gateway, from chamber to chamber and corridor to corridor, opening a new one as soon as the last one closes, as soon as she hears footsteps. Death surrounds her and lightning follows. Companions in battle, slain by bitter victory. Da’shain, sworn to peace and fallen to fire.

“Ilyena, my love, where are you?” he calls to her, and she steps quickly through another gateway as the stone behind her melts. Steps into a chamber that still smells of lightning, and there amongst the dead are her children.

Her knees strike stone and her mouth opens in a scream her voice is not strong enough to shape and time shatters around her as she reaches for power for life for forgiveness for fire to sear the pain away for wind to turn back time—

The power is there, just out of sight and edged with laughter, and she wants to reach for it but if she does she will damn them. All she can do, all that is left to do, is surrender, so that in another Age, they may be reborn.

She stands, shaking, and trusts in the balance of gravity and darkness and light to hold her steady as footsteps draw closer. She will face him here, surrounded by everyone they have loved.

He will follow her into Shadow, or he will follow her into death. He cannot be allowed to turn and so he must fall, by her hand or his own, because she knows with a certainty that has nothing to do with her visions that those are the only paths along which a future still rises.

"Forgive me, Lews Therin," she whispers. "Light, forgive me."

Spirit pulses through the _ter’angreal_ on her hand as Elan waits outside, and Lews stands in the arched entry to this chamber of shadow and light. A last reunion of the golden ones, those who are left, come to make a mockery of the bright future they once promised and were promised. Come to bring the end of an Age, that none may surpass their glory. For a moment, as lightning flashes through the corridors and murder flashes in Lews Therin’s eyes, they are all once more on the same side.

“Ilyena?”

Love fills his eyes and lightning fills his hands as he reaches for her, a gentle caress that sears through her with agony unimaginable.

And amidst the pain, one final vision. A single star flickering into existence against a midnight sky. And so as she falls into darkness, Ilyena holds fast to a fading memory of light.

**Author's Note:**

> I've not yet actually finished the series, so I apologise for any errors that may have occurred as a result. Timeline is taken largely from "The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time," supplemented by guesswork where there's no information. 
> 
> Occasional artistic liberties have been taken with science, but mostly it's just magic and oversimplification.
> 
> Quote at the beginning taken from the poem "The Old Astronomer (To His Pupil)" by Sarah Williams.
> 
> Comments are of course appreciated, but I'd appreciate if they could be kept spoiler-free. (I suppose I could just be careful about reading them, that works too...)


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